Tag: music

Sum­mer was get­ting boring so i deci­ded to make a new album and start a new netla­bel.
The album is cal­led “LCD Mos­tra-se” and is a col­lec­ti­on of field recor­dings from the self-titled event that occu­red in Gui­ma­rães on the 21 and 22 of July, orga­ni­zed by our LCDbrothers.

All made of old mate­ri­al found in the Alt/Lab ins­tal­la­ti­ons, and a very spe­ci­al big thankxxx for Móni­ca who brought the casings (we are going back to that in a moment) for the drum pads.

So the idea was to make drum pads that we could hook up to a sound card(or wha­te­ver) and them make swe­et music, this is a very nice com­bi­na­ti­on betwe­en pie­zo­e­lec­tric com­po­nents and a few layers of some absor­bent sound mate­ri­al like rub­ber or cork foil (that’s what we use becau­se the­re was nothing more) and a pie­ce of alu­mi­num foil for a gre­a­ter drum area .

We use an old can (20l) of paint, four pie­zo­e­lec­tric found in elec­tro­nic junk like old modems and old telepho­nes, wire for con­nec­ting the pie­zos, cork foil for insu­la­ti­on the drum pad area and Móni­ca sup­ply the casings (squa­re rub­ber cd´s stands), and glue for put­ting everything nice and tight .

First we cut a pie­ce of the can (cir­cu­lar about 10cm radius)and we glu­ed the pie­zo into it, then we dril­led one hole into the rub­ber casing for the wires to came out, them we cut two squa­re cork foil parts (the first in the bot­tom of the casing and the other for the top) a bit of glue and that’s it drum pads ready to rock.

Now we got some audio coming out of the pads but thats just boring becau­se its always the same and we want to go further like trans­for­ming audio into midi mes­sa­ges, and we found the right tool for it, its cal­led “KTDrum­Trig­ger” and he trans­forms the audio sig­nal into midi notes, we can use this midi notes insi­de a sequen­cer pro­gram to con­trol any kind of ins­tru­ment (either VSTI or some other stuff), in our case we use the drum pads to con­trol “Bat­tery” and thats it ins­tant fun.

The­re are some other links and some other ide­as for drum pads. This “one“uses ardu­nio as a sour­ce for the imput sig­nal.

This post today reflects a lit­tle about what cir­cuit ben­ding and diy are.

I have many fri­ends and col­le­a­gues asking me “-So what is cir­cuit ben­ding?”, well here goes the awser and a bit of the his­tory behind cir­cuit ben­ding.

Seems that a guy cal­led Reed Gha­za­la, was making expe­ri­ments with some synthe­si­zers, trying to get some more sounds out of the elec­tro­nic ins­tru­ments, so he deci­ded to open one and poke the guts of the beast .

He soon finds out that the core of an elec­tro­nic ins­tru­ment its a lot of fun and this could be exci­ting dis­co­ver.

Now…have you ever heard of the Savant syn­dro­me ? a per­son who as Savant Syn­dro­me have the abi­lity of mixing emo­ti­ons, like seeing num­bers in a wide vari­ety of colors or the alpha­bet in sha­pes and forms, the cau­se of this, its sim­ply the brain and some short fuses in some are­as, and this its exac­tly what Cir­cuit ben­ding is.

So, when Reed deci­ded to explo­re the pos­si­bi­lity of the short cir­cuit he open a big door for expe­ri­men­tal music and a new form of seeing elec­tro­nic devi­ces, the idea its sim­ply bril­li­ant, lets open some toys, synths, pedals (wha­te­ver) and lets start to take some really cool sounds out of it, and the bril­li­ant part is : you don’t need to know about elec­tro­nics or be a geek who spent all day in the gara­ge (myself inclu­ded), becau­se cir­cuit ben­ding its like a a brain in short fuse.

What you need to cir­cuit ben­ding some stuff ? This is another ques­ti­on and an impor­tant one. Hummm lets see:

First, you will need some kind of devi­ce that pro­du­ces sound, like a toy, a dis­tor­ti­on pedal, an old synth just to name a few.

Second, this is the impor­tant part DON’T USEANYTHINGTHATCONNECTSDIRECTLYTOTHEAC/DCPOWER, this means DEATH, ins­te­ad use bat­te­ri­es, all kinds of bat­te­ri­es and even trans­for­mers as long you don’t tou­ch that evil 220 V you are in busi­ness .

Third, open your devi­ce and cho­o­se your method of ope­ra­ti­on, this could be done in a vari­ety of ways, you could use your fin­gers with a lit­tle of sali­va (ughhh), or two screw dri­vers con­nec­ted by an alli­ga­tor clip.

Four, explo­re and see if the devi­ce reacts to your tou­ch poking some cir­cuits, i often get some gre­at results poking the chips legs and con­nec­ting them together, fin­ding the cool points its fun so don’t give up if you don’t find something in the first 5 minu­tes.

Five, ohh the “intre­nets” yes there’s a lot in here just sear­ch a bit and you will find your­self in a brand new world, of cour­se the cir­cuit ben­ding com­mu­nity its open min­ded and fri­en­dly, so don’t be shy and ask ques­ti­ons (most of us don’t know what are doing so join the club).

Now you know were Beck, Madon­na, Mike Pat­ton and many others are get­ting they ins­pi­ra­ti­on (yeah that’s right Madon­na), the musi­cal pos­si­bi­lity are immen­se, just think is you, who are dis­co­ve­ring your own sounds and making it at the same time (not like a pat­ch in a synthe­si­zer ) something really new and fresh made enti­rely by you.